


Three Words Whispered in the Dark

by waterfallliam



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Masturbation, Masturbation Fantasy, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 22:46:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11519076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfallliam/pseuds/waterfallliam
Summary: A clandestine surveillance AI, watching with ten thousand eyes and a million ears is probably the only one to know that John Reese is laying awake in bed at on this winter night. Technically it’s morning, but technically John is dead.John pines for Harold and sometimes talks to the Machine, but she doesn't talk back. Takes place at various points in s1-3.





	Three Words Whispered in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> warning: this isn't really a happy fic.  
> i wrote bits of this late at night when i was lonely, and i don't think i can get much more out of it so i'm posting it.  
> hope you enjoy reading!

**** A clandestine surveillance AI, watching with ten thousand eyes and a million ears is probably the only one to know that John Reese is laying awake in bed at on this winter night. Technically it’s morning, but technically John is dead.

Technically, there is a version of him in another universe who is asleep. There are many of them in fact. (Technically an infinite number.) There are probably more where he’s awake than asleep, John suspects. (Technically, infinities cannot be larger than one another.)  Far more where he’s dead in every sense of the word. 

Maybe there’s one where he’s awake for better reasons. 

On nights like this one, John’s thoughts always circle back to same thing. As if he’s the tide, he washes up on a beach that’s made of daydreams and desire. Harold is standing there, wearing a three piece suit and a frown. The time and places changes, but he is always the same.

When John lets himself image–when he indulges–it’s always the same. Harold lets him come close. Closer than ghosts of touches and the pleased crinkle of his eyes when John is particularly witty. John can brush his palms all over Harold, over and under his clothing, holding and caressing. John can kiss him in all the places he likes: on the tip of his nose, on the shell of his ear, the inside of his wrist, on his lips, his thighs–

Best of all, Harold reciprocates. John melts into him, sinking into gentle touches and the sure slide of his lips. John thinks Harold would be a good kisser. John images he would go slow, wanting to appreciate everything. He would let John rut against his thigh; make John wait as he slowly opens him up with his deft hands. Maybe he’d be a bit cheeky and give the head of John’s cock a lick when he’s least expecting it. 

Back in his single bed, John licks his palm and reaches down between his thighs. In his mind, Harold has him spread out against cotton sheets. Every touch is intimate and full of intention. They burn through him, wave after wave of heat as Harold moves his fingers, again and again until– 

“Now I think.” Harold’s voice is a quiet rasp. It matches his hungry expression as he positions himself beside John.

John strokes himself faster, twisting his wrist and using his precum to ease the slide of his hand. 

Harold’s inside him now, a reassuring hand on the small of his back. When he’s ready, John begins to move. In his head, Harold moans. John clutches onto his shoulder with one hand, easing his movements and allowing John to pull himself closer to Harold. It’s not long until John comes.

“Harold,” John whimpers, catching most of his cum with his hand. 

As his orgasm washes over him, John imagines Harold holding him, after. Maybe Harold would press a kiss against his forehead. Maybe he’d lace their fingers together as they fell asleep. Maybe, for a few seconds, John would feel happy.

John cleans himself up with some tissues and turns his pillow over. The fabric is cool and he’s floating a little from his orgasm, but even as he keeps his eyes shut, sleep evades him.

He turns, restless despite how his orgasm should have helped with that. John opens his eyes, stares at the ceiling and thinks about the microphone in his phone that’s laying on his bedside table, charging. The Machine is always listening, always watching, trying to keep their country safe.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s frustrating, to say the least, when all the Machine will do is spit numbers at him after Harold is kidnapped. To say the most, John feels like he might crawl out of his skin. He doesn’t want to think about how Harold considered himself expendable, collateral. 

John, a viable contingency? Harold is supposed to be smarter than that.

Practically yelling at a street camera, John doesn’t feel self conscious. He’d forgotten what that feels like years ago, around the same time his identity was so eroded, it became hard to see himself staring back in the mirror, to make himself see more than a list of features arranged in a particular way. 

That’s how John moves through the world: not always seeing people, but traits, dangers, chances–the social intricacies people operate with and how to move between them, unnoticed. How to get the job done. How to make sure his mission is successful.  

It’s not enough to get Harold back on his own. 

John can’t ignore Harold’s wish, can’t ignore the numbers–but the Machine could give him more than that. “Do the math…”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

John stays as close as he can to Harold in the aftermath. 

Bear is loyal and fierce and, like John, he doesn’t need long to warm to Harold. John hopes that their combined protective nature can keep Harold safe. It has to be enough.

John wonders how strong the rules Harold gave the Machine are. He’s worked out that Hannah Frey’s number had been the only way it could have helped within a few days of getting Harold back. Artificial Intelligence: AI. John doesn’t understand the theorems or algorithms, but he knows that somehow, it must care. It cares about the numbers. It must care for Harold, too.

John wonders if it cares about him. He wonders if it knows about all the things he does. John deliberates and concludes that it must know how he feels about Harold. He wonders if it is, in its own way, glad that Harold has another person to look out for him. 

“Keep him safe,” John says, not caring for the Machine’s rules.

They are three words whispered in the dark, but John knows the Machine is listening. Somehow, it’s easier for him to drift off to sleep after that.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

John’s feeling playful as he stares at his ceiling, the memory of Harold scorning him on his fake date like a caress. John wants it to be jealousy. He wants it to be the result of Harold’s desire to take the number’s place. But he knows better. Still, when he’s laying in bed, waiting for sleep, he says: “Do I even have a chance?”

John isn’t sure who he’s asking.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

“Protect him, if he tries anything stupid.” 

This one is whispered into his burner phone, as John lies curled up on himself in Rikers. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

In God Mode, the Machine’s voice is everyone’s. Its sight reaches farther than John had dared to imagine. Later, when everything is quiet and he has a moment to himself, John wonders how far it sees into him. 

How well does it know him? 

The way he stamps his feet when he’s cold, the soft smile he catches on his face when he watches Harold, the way he hums to himself when he thinks he’s alone. A list of the people he’s killed, a lot of pages inked over in black, a trail of names and identities that were mostly not him. (Blood, seeping out of his heart and choking him, stopping him from saying he’s sorry, from mourning, from ever saying anything to Harold.)

How well can it know anyone?

John wonders if the Machine ever feels lonely. Despite watching over eight million people, its focus is their pain, their aggression, their strife and desperation. It watches for ill intentions and John thinks it can understand them because it understands kindness and love, too. 

Sometimes John thinks he thinks too much. “Please don’t stop giving us numbers,” John says, directly into his microphone this time. That matters more than his guesswork concerning the Machine. John needs his purpose–a purpose that Harold, and the Machine, gave him. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

They get numbers again, and Shaw joins them. It’s good to have her on their team. Still, John ends up tight spots every now and then. This time he’s expertly tied to chair, cut off from Harold and Shaw, water from the leaky roof of the building dripping onto his face.

The water’s almost icy, but John barely registers it. His gut is steadily bleeding out. John’s realising that this time could actually be the time: the time he dies. He hasn’t thought about dying for a while now. 

When he first started working for Harold, dying while saving someone sounded like a better promise than the bottle. Then it sank in what Harold was offering, who Harold seemed to be by the small slips of information he let John have about him. There was something about the way he carried himself, the way he traversed the world with a tired yet sure sense of meaning, and of course an air of mystery that drew John in. He was smart, capable and unfailingly had his wits about him. Handsome, also.

It didn’t even take a week for John to get hooked.

Now, as the water kisses his skin again and again, John thinks that he would prefer not to die like this.

(He thinks the best way to die would be protecting Harold.)

“If I die,” John looks at the laptop across the room, which was disconnected now, but had previously been used by the bastard who had stabbed him to gloat at him through the screen. “Tell Harold thank you.” 

John’s said it before–Harold should know–but John wants him to understand how much he means it. They’re to be his last words, after all. (Again.)

  
  


 

John doesn't die, and wonders if the Machine would have told Harold.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

“Couldn’t you see?” John asks, his blood loud in his ears, blood leaking from his shoulder. Couldn’t that other bullet have missed? Joss doesn’t deserve _ this–  _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

The next time he speaks to the Machine is as he patches Shaw up. She's finally passed out, Harold's in the wind, and John has a gaping hole where his heart used to live. He fixes Shaw's wound, but can't do anything about his own. 

He knows which question is more important to ask right now: "Is there still a chance we can win this war?" (Is there any way to get Harold back?) If anyone should know, an all seeing ASI should.

She had given them a chance, a choice: a number who could have been their victim. But at what cost? What had she had to give up, to ask Harold to take a life? What had she forced him to lose, in asking...

Had it been worth it? Or was it the last stab in the dark, the one made when what matters no longer seems to matter in the face of a future so hopeless that that any option is an option. John knows these things, can feel the places parts of him no longer live. 

John thinks that if stopping Samaritan requires sacrifice it should be him. He can stand to lose more; he’d be happy to, even–anything to undo the hurt Harold had suffered last night. Anything to make sure Harold’s never hurt like that again. 

Ultimately, it’s not that John's death wouldn't hurt Harold, but it’s that there’s little John thinks he won't do for Harold: like taking one more life to stop Harold from having to, like not taking it to save Harold from losing his friends in the same night he lost Her. Like putting Harold above his old calling of saving many at the cost of one. (Like trying not to die because Harold asked him to.)

John can still feel the weight of the gun in his hand. He doesn’t know if he will come to regret his actions, but he knows that as long as Harold lives he won’t. He can’t. Harold matters too much. The lines between his personal need and the need John perceives the world has for him is blurring, and he resigns himself to it. The part of him that should care is long dead. All John has is his love, and whatever that will bring him.


End file.
